Venture Capital interview preparation

Questions

100

Traced to a firm

31

Firms

12

Updated

September 2026

Asked at

All firmsGeneral Atlantic9Insight Partners7Silver Lake6Vista Equity Partners4Bessemer Venture Partners3ACAccel2Advent International2Battery Ventures2Andreessen Horowitz1Coatue Management1Sequoia Capital1WPWarburg Pincus1

Topic

All topicsSourcing and deal flow5Market sizing and estimation8Founders and teams5Unit economics and cohorts11Term sheets12Cap table and dilution7Early-stage valuation7Portfolio construction6Board and governance4Down rounds and secondaries4Exits and liquidity4Fund economics5Sector theses and markets6India venture market6Fit and motivation10

Level

AnyCoreIntermediateHard

Type

AnyTechnicalFitCaseMarket viewBrainteaser

1. 001How do you source companies?Sourcing and deal flowIntermediatephone / first roundGeneral AtlanticTechnology, Media and Telecom · New York · 2016General AtlanticGeneralist · Beijing · 2014

   Say this

   Thesis first, then a systematic channel to work that thesis, then relationships that make the outreach land. I would not describe sourcing as networking, because networking has no denominator. It is a funnel you can count.

   Then walk it

   1. Start with a thesis: a market shift you believe in, written as a sentence. 'Vertical SaaS for Indian pharma distribution' is a thesis. 'Interesting AI companies' is not.
   2. Then map the space exhaustively. Every company in the category, from Tracxn, Crunchbase, app-store rankings, GitHub stars, job postings, conference speaker lists. Twenty to fifty names, not five.
   3. Rank them on signals you can see from outside: hiring velocity, web traffic trend, review volume, who the angels were. The last one matters most early: a great seed round with three operator angels from the same category is a real signal.
   4. Then outbound. A specific, short email that shows you have used the product and understand the wedge. Response rates on a thesis-led email run several times higher than a generic one, and founders talk to each other about which VCs send lazy notes.
   5. Relationships are the compounding layer on top, not the substitute for it. The best repeat channel is founders you already backed, and second-time founders from companies in your thesis.
   6. And keep the denominator. I would track companies mapped, first meetings taken, second meetings, term sheets. If the conversion from first meeting to second is under a fifth, my filter is wrong, not my outreach.

   Where candidates lose it

   Answering 'I'd use my network and go to events'. That tells the interviewer nothing and describes what everybody already does. They want a repeatable process with a thesis at the front and a number at the back. Name real tools and one live thesis you are working.

   Expect next

   • Give me a thesis you are working right now and the ten companies in it.
   • How would you source in a sector where you have no network at all?
   • What is your reply rate on cold outbound, and what makes it better?

   Reported by candidates at General Atlantic (Technology, Media and Telecom, New York, 2016); General Atlantic (Generalist, Beijing, 2014). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

2. 002What are your connections in the healthcare tech industry?Sourcing and deal flowIntermediatefirst roundAndreessen HorowitzTechnology, Media and Telecom · San Francisco · 2020

   Say this

   Answer with named, specific relationships and what each one gives you, not with a claim to be well-connected. And be honest about where the network is thin, then say how you are filling it, because a junior candidate is not expected to have a partner-level rolodex.

   Then walk it

   1. Name three or four real people and the category of access each represents. A clinician who can tell you whether a workflow product actually saves time. An operator at a payer who understands reimbursement. A founder or two in the space.
   2. Say what you get from each. The clinician tells you if adoption is real; the payer contact tells you whether the thing gets paid for, which is the whole game in healthcare.
   3. Then show the machine that builds it. A monthly cadence of calls, notes you keep, and a habit of writing something public in the space so inbound starts working for you.
   4. Be concrete about the gap. Something like: I have good clinical depth and almost no relationships on the payer or hospital procurement side, and here are the two people I am trying to get to this quarter.
   5. Then tie it to the firm. If their healthcare thesis is provider workflow, say which of your contacts is directly useful for diligence on that, because they are testing whether you can add to the firm's diligence bench, not whether you are popular.

   Where candidates lose it

   Inflating the network. VC is a small world and the interviewer probably knows your named contacts or can check in one call. Also answering with a count rather than a use: 'I know a lot of people in health tech' is worse than naming two people and exactly what each one can verify for you.

   Expect next

   • Who would you call to diligence a claims-automation company?
   • What is the single biggest thing you have learned from one of those people?
   • How do you build a network in a sector you are new to?

   Reported by candidates at Andreessen Horowitz (Technology, Media and Telecom, San Francisco, 2020). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

3. 003You get two hundred inbound decks a month. How do you triage them?Sourcing and deal flowIntermediatetechnicalEarly-stage VCSeed funds

   Say this

   Two filters in sequence. First a hard screen on fund fit that takes thirty seconds, then a judgement screen on the three things that actually predict an outcome. Most of the two hundred die on the first one, and that is fine.

   Then walk it

   1. Hard screen, mechanical: stage, cheque size, geography, sector mandate, and whether the round is already led. If the fund writes $2m seed cheques in India and this is a $40m Series C in Brazil, it is a polite no in one line. That is maybe 70 percent of the pile.
   2. Second screen, three questions only: is the market big enough to return the fund on its own, is there something about this team that makes them the right people for it, and is there evidence anybody actually wants this.
   3. Evidence beats narrative at this stage. Twenty paying customers with a two-week sales cycle tells me more than a beautiful market slide. For consumer, a retention curve that flattens.
   4. Then a deliberate 'weird pile'. Companies that fail the screen but where something is genuinely strange in an interesting way. In a power-law business the outliers rarely look sensible on a first pass, so a purely mechanical filter is a good way to miss the one that matters.
   5. Reply to everyone within a few days, including the noes, with one line of real reason. The cost is low and the reputational return is high, because founders route deals to VCs who answer.
   6. And I would track my own passes. Writing down why I said no, then reviewing those names a year later, is the only way to find out whether my filter is any good.

   Where candidates lose it

   Describing only the mechanical filter. Any associate can build a screen. The interesting half of the answer is how you keep the screen from killing the outlier, and that you close the loop by tracking your own passes.

   Expect next

   • What would make you take a meeting with a company that fails your screen?
   • How would you review your own passes a year later?
   • Which single signal would you keep if you could only keep one?
4. 004What companies are you excited about right now?Sourcing and deal flowIntermediatefirst roundBattery VenturesVenture Capital · Boston · 2019General AtlanticTechnology, Media and Telecom · New York · 2016

   Say this

   Have three ready, deliberately different, and lead with why each one matters rather than what it does. One private company in the firm's stage and sector, one public company where you have a real view, and one that is early and slightly contrarian.

   Then walk it

   1. For each, the same four-beat structure: the shift in the world that makes it possible, what the company does, the evidence it is working, and the one thing that would kill it.
   2. Keep it to ninety seconds each. The failure mode is a five-minute product description with no investment view attached.
   3. Make at least one of them a company the firm could plausibly invest in next quarter. That is the real test: whether you can see through their lens, not just yours.
   4. Have a number for each. Revenue run rate if it is public, headcount growth or download trend if it is private, and say where you got it so they know you are not guessing.
   5. The contrarian one earns the most credit and carries the most risk. Say what consensus believes and why you think consensus is wrong. If you cannot state the consensus view accurately, do not use the slot.
   6. Then be ready for the flip: the interviewer will ask why they should not invest. Having the bear case ready is what makes it look like judgement rather than enthusiasm.

   Where candidates lose it

   Naming the same three companies every candidate names, or naming something the firm already owns without knowing it. Read the portfolio page before you walk in. And never pitch a company in their portfolio as a new idea — it happens constantly and it ends the interview.

   Expect next

   • Why should we not invest in that one?
   • What would you need to believe for it to be a ten-bagger?
   • What do you think about our portfolio?

   Reported by candidates at Battery Ventures (Venture Capital, Boston, 2019); General Atlantic (Technology, Media and Telecom, New York, 2016). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

5. 005If you were sourcing growth equity investment opportunities, which areas would you look for?Sourcing and deal flowIntermediatetechnicalGeneral AtlanticGeneralist · Beijing · 2014

   Say this

   Areas where the business model is already proven and what is left is a capital and execution problem, not a product-risk problem. That means recurring or repeat revenue, a unit economic already in the black, and a market growing faster than nominal GDP.

   Then walk it

   1. The growth equity filter is different from venture: I am not paying for the possibility that it works, I am paying for the certainty that it scales. So the screen is evidence-heavy — net retention, payback, cohort behaviour over at least eight quarters.
   2. Structural tailwind first. Something in the world changed and is still changing: payments digitisation, healthcare shifting to value-based contracts, industrial software replacing spreadsheets. I want the tailwind to run longer than my hold period.
   3. Then market structure. Fragmented markets with a clear consolidator, or category leaders in markets big enough that second place is still a good business. Duopolies with price wars are where growth capital goes to die.
   4. Then the capital-efficiency test: does more money actually buy more growth here? In sales-led B2B, yes, you can hire quota-carrying reps against a known payback. In a consumer business where CAC rises with scale, often no.
   5. Then the entry question, which is where growth deals are actually won or lost: is there a founder-led business that has never raised institutional money and needs a partner for a specific reason — an acquisition, a geography, a secondary for early employees.
   6. Concretely, if I were arguing one today: vertical software in regulated industries, where the incumbent is a twenty-year-old on-premise system, switching is painful but compliance forces it, and net retention sits above 115 percent.

   Where candidates lose it

   Listing hot sectors. The question is about the screen, not the fashion. Growth equity cares about proof, so any answer that does not mention retention, payback and whether capital converts into growth is a venture answer given in a growth seat.

   Expect next

   • How is that screen different from an early-stage one?
   • What would make you pass on a company growing 60 percent a year?
   • Where does a growth investor actually add value?

   Reported by candidates at General Atlantic (Generalist, Beijing, 2014). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

6. 006How do you size a market for a company that is creating a category that does not exist yet?Market sizing and estimationHardtechnicalEarly-stage VC

   Say this

   You cannot size the category, so you size the behaviour it replaces and then size the behaviour it unlocks. Two numbers: the budget or time being spent on the old way today, and the population that could not participate before because the old way was too expensive.

   Then walk it

   1. Start with substitution. Find the spend that already exists in an adjacent, ugly form — the agency fee, the manual process, the spreadsheet plus two analysts. That is a floor you can defend with real data.
   2. Then expansion, which is where the real answer lives. New categories are usually big because they drop the price by an order of magnitude and bring in users who were priced out. Ride hailing was not sized correctly off the taxi market; it was several times bigger because at half the price people stopped taking the bus.
   3. So build it as price times units at the new price point, not at the old one. That single step is what separates a serious estimate from a top-down slide.
   4. Sanity-check with a revenue-per-user bound. If you claim a billion users at $50 a year in a country where average annual discretionary spend on that category is $8, the number is wrong and you should say so.
   5. Then reverse the question, which is the answer interviewers actually want: forget TAM, what does this company have to be true to return my fund? If I need a $3bn exit, that is roughly $300m of revenue at a 10x multiple, which is 3 million users at $100. Is 3 million users plausible in ten years? That question is answerable; 'what is the TAM' is not.
   6. And say the limitation out loud: for genuinely new categories the TAM number is theatre. It is a test of whether your reasoning holds, not a forecast anyone believes.

   Where candidates lose it

   Pulling a Gartner number off a slide. The interviewer wants to watch you build it. And sizing the incumbent market only — that is the error that made every early taxi-market analysis of ride hailing too small by a factor of five.

   Expect next

   • So what does this company need to look like for us to make 10x?
   • When is a small market actually fine?
   • How would you size the market for an AI coding agent?
7. 007Bottom-up or top-down market sizing — which do you trust, and why?Market sizing and estimationCorephone / first roundGrowth equity

   Say this

   Bottom-up, always, and I use top-down only as a sanity check. Bottom-up is units times price, built from things you can count. Top-down is a big industry number times a percentage you made up, and that percentage is doing all the work.

   Then walk it

   1. Bottom-up: number of potential customers, times the share you can realistically win, times what each one pays. Every input is arguable on its own terms, which is the point — the interviewer can push on one number rather than the whole thing.
   2. Top-down: 'the global logistics market is $10 trillion and we only need 1 percent.' That sentence has appeared in every failed pitch deck ever written. The 1 percent is unjustified and usually off by a factor of ten.
   3. Worked example. Indian restaurant POS software: roughly 500,000 addressable organised restaurants, maybe 40 percent can pay for software, at ₹2,000 a month that is ₹4.8bn a year, call it $58m of Indian SaaS revenue. Now you can argue about penetration and price with real edges.
   4. And notice what bottom-up just told you: a $58m market cannot support a venture-scale outcome on software alone, which is exactly why every Indian restaurant-tech company ends up in payments or lending. Top-down would never have surfaced that.
   5. Use top-down to check the order of magnitude. If bottom-up gives you $58m and the top-down says $6bn, one of them is wrong and finding out which is the real work.
   6. The honest limitation: bottom-up systematically underestimates genuinely new categories, because it prices at today's price point. So for a category-creating company I build bottom-up at the new price, not the old one.

   Where candidates lose it

   Saying 'both, they're complementary' and stopping. That is true and empty. Commit to bottom-up, then show one worked build with real numbers. The follow-up is always 'size it for me now', so have a live example ready.

   Expect next

   • Size the Indian SaaS market for restaurants, out loud, right now.
   • When does bottom-up mislead you?
   • What is the difference between TAM, SAM and SOM?
8. 008A founder tells you their TAM is fifty billion dollars. How do you stress-test that?Market sizing and estimationIntermediatetechnicalEarly-stage VCGrowth equity

   Say this

   Rebuild it bottom-up in front of them and see where the two numbers diverge. Then test the three places TAM claims usually break: who actually has a budget, what they actually pay, and whether the product they are buying is the one that reaches all of those customers.

   Then walk it

   1. Ask how they built it. If the answer is a research-house report, the number is not theirs and they have not thought about it. If they can build it live, that alone is most of the signal I need about the founder.
   2. Test the customer count. 'All small businesses' is not an addressable base. How many have the problem acutely, have the budget, and are reachable through a channel you can afford? That usually cuts the base by 80 to 90 percent.
   3. Test the price. Founders assume enterprise pricing on an SMB base. If the claimed ACV is $30,000 and the customers are 20-person firms, the pricing and the segment contradict each other.
   4. Test the product boundary. A $50bn TAM often assumes three products they have not built. Ask what share of it today's product addresses, and you frequently get from $50bn to $400m in one question.
   5. Then the important reframe, and I would say it kindly: the size of the TAM barely matters at seed. What matters is whether the first $10m of revenue is reachable from one segment with one product. A huge TAM with no beachhead is a worse company than a $1bn market with an obvious wedge.
   6. And I would not treat a bad TAM slide as disqualifying. Plenty of great companies had absurd TAM slides. It is a probe into how the founder thinks, not a scorecard item.

   Where candidates lose it

   Treating this as gotcha — catching the founder out and feeling clever. Diligence is not cross-examination. The useful output is a defensible number and a read on how the founder reasons under pressure, and you get neither if you turn it into an argument.

   Expect next

   • What is the smallest market you would still invest in?
   • How do you find the beachhead segment?
   • What if they refuse to rebuild it with you?
9. 009What is the difference between TAM, SAM and SOM, and which one actually matters?Market sizing and estimationCorephone / first roundGrowth equity

   Say this

   TAM is everyone who could conceivably buy the category, SAM is the slice this product and business model can actually serve, and SOM is the share you can realistically win in your planning horizon. SAM is the one that matters for the investment decision.

   Then walk it

   1. TAM: total addressable market, the whole category with no constraints. Useful only for establishing that the ceiling is not the binding problem.
   2. SAM: serviceable addressable market. Constrained by geography, segment, regulation, language, price point and what your product does today. This is where the honest number lives.
   3. SOM: serviceable obtainable market, your realistic share given competition and your distribution. For a seed company this is the five-year revenue ceiling, and it should be big enough to return the fund.
   4. Worked example. Global payroll software might be a $30bn TAM. Payroll for Indian companies with 50 to 500 employees is maybe a $250m SAM. Winning 15 percent of that is a $38m revenue business — a real company, and possibly too small for a $500m fund. That comparison is the entire decision.
   5. So the question I actually answer is: does the SOM support an outcome that returns the fund at the ownership I can get? Everything else is framing.
   6. The limitation worth naming: these boundaries are soft and companies move between them. Every great company's SAM expanded — Amazon's was books. So I hold the SAM number loosely and ask whether the expansion path is credible rather than assumed.

   Where candidates lose it

   Getting the definitions right and then failing to say which one drives the decision. Definitions are a two-mark question; the judgement is in connecting SOM to fund returns at your likely ownership. And do not confuse SAM with 'the market we're targeting first' — that is the beachhead, which is smaller again.

   Expect next

   • What SOM do you need for this to return a $200m fund?
   • Give me a company whose SAM expanded dramatically.
   • How would you size this bottom-up?
10. 010If you were to open a restaurant, what would be your key concerns?Market sizing and estimationIntermediatetechnicalGeneral AtlanticGeneralist · Beijing · 2014

    Say this

    Treat it as an investment, not a hobby: location economics, the unit-level P&L, working capital, and whether the concept is repeatable. The concerns in order are rent as a share of revenue, labour, food cost, and whether I can get a second site to work.

    Then walk it

    1. Unit economics first. Restaurant maths is brutal and well known: food cost around 30 percent of revenue, labour 25 to 30, rent under 10, leaving a single-digit to low-teens operating margin if everything goes right.
    2. So the binding constraint is revenue per square foot, which is really seats times turns times average ticket. Forty seats, two turns at lunch and two at dinner, ₹600 average ticket, 26 days — that is about ₹2.5m a month, or ₹30m a year. Every cost decision has to fit inside that.
    3. Then the capital question: fit-out and deposit are largely sunk and unrecoverable, payback on a new site typically runs 18 to 30 months, and the lease term has to be long enough to earn that back. A three-year lease on a five-year payback is not a business.
    4. Working capital is the thing people miss. Suppliers on short credit, aggregators paying out on a lag, staff paid monthly, plus perishable inventory. A profitable restaurant can die on a cash timing mismatch.
    5. Then the concern I would lead with as an investor: is it repeatable without me? A single great restaurant is a job, not an asset. What makes it scalable is a standardised menu, a central kitchen, a manager who is not the founder, and a site-selection model that has worked twice.
    6. And the delivery question, which changed the maths: aggregator commissions of 20 to 30 percent turn a thin dine-in margin negative unless you price a separate delivery menu. Cloud kitchens exist because that one number is so punishing.

    Where candidates lose it

    Answering as a diner — menu, ambience, chef. The interviewer is testing whether you naturally reach for a unit-level P&L and a payback period on an unfamiliar business. Lead with the cost structure and the repeatability, then let the concept discussion follow.

    Expect next

    • How long before you open a second location?
    • Would you ever invest in a restaurant chain? What would you need to see?
    • What is the payback period on a new site and how would you shorten it?

    Reported by candidates at General Atlantic (Generalist, Beijing, 2014). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.